Digital watermarks are imperceptible codes, the size of a postage stamp, covering the surface of a consumer goods packaging. The usage of digital watermarks will enable better and more accurate sorting streams, leading to higher-quality recycled material benefiting the complete packaging value chain.
Under the truly revolutionary industrial pilot HolyGrail 2.0, together with close to 100 valuable industry partners, we are exploring digital watermarks for more accurate sorting of packaging and higher-quality recycling. Based on global and open standards for product identification, digital waterms can encode a wide range of attributes such as manufacturer, SKU, type of plastics used and composition for multilayer objects, food vs. non-food usage, etc. The aim is that once the packaging has entered into a waste sorting facility, the digital watermark can be detected and encoded by a standard high-resolution camera on the sorting line, which then – based on the transferred attributes – is able to sort the packaging in corresponding streams.
By staying true to our EverMinds™ mindset of thinking circular, our colleague Philip Knapen will take you now on a visit to our industry partner Verstraete in Mould Labels to discover digital watermarks, an invisible passport for plastics packaging.
Do you want to learn more about this topic? Then please reach out to:
Philip Knapen, Application Marketing Manager
Email: philip.knapen@borealisgroup.com
Phone:+32 1145 9435